Presbyterians Meet Reagan on Latin Pact : Urge President to Support Regional Accord, Talk With Ortega

A group of Presbyterians urged President Reagan, in a White House meeting this week, to support the preliminary peace accord recently signed by the presidents of the five Central American nations and to talk directly with any leader of the region, particularly President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

“We felt that in dialogue, there is more chance for understanding and reconciliation,” said the Rev. Donn Moomaw, senior pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church. The Reagan Administration has said that it will not talk directly to Ortega’s Marxist-oriented government.

Moomaw, whom Reagan considers his pastor, was instrumental in arranging the meeting Wednesday with himself and seven members of a task force that had made recommendations critical of Administration policies in Central America. The President had telephoned Moomaw, asking about the recent Presbyterian General Assembly adoption of the report.

Interest Shown

Moomaw said he thought the President was “genuinely interested” in church members’ opinions about the people in Central America.

The pastor acknowledged, however, that during the hourlong meeting, which included Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Vice President George Bush, that the President defended his own perception of the situation.

Moomaw said, “Mr. Shultz was making the point that there was no religious freedom in Nicaragua.”

But Moomaw and the task force members, including a former moderator of the denomination, Harriet Nelson of Napa, Calif., disputed the Administration’s contentions about the lack of religious freedom in Nicaragua.

La Canada Presbyterian Pastor Gary Demarest, who was in Nicaragua earlier in the week and returned after the White House meeting, told of his experience in preaching at a Pentecostal church last Sunday, Moomaw said.

Open Letter

Earlier, Demarest had written an open letter, printed in several Presbyterian publications, in which he said he did not encounter in Nicaragua the kinds of restrictions and attitudes he has found in totalitarian countries. Rather, he wrote, “other than in combat zones, there is complete freedom of movement, inquiry and conversation.”

In summarizing the message of the task force members to the President, Moomaw said, “The primary concern of the Nicaraguan man and woman in the street was that they are much more impacted by the war (against the contras ) than by any repression by the existing government.”

The Presbyterian Church (USA), at its recent General Assemblies, has supported the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and opposed U.S. aid to the contras. The General Assembly has also opposed U.S. military aid to the government of El Salvador because of human rights violations.